Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Gennifer Weisenfeld, "The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)
Description: Commercial art is more than just mass-produced publicity; it constructs social and political ideologies that impact the public’s everyday life. In The Fine Art of Persuasion: Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, and Empire in Modern Japan (Duke University Press, 2025), Gennifer Weisenfeld examines the evolution of Japanese advertising graphic design from the early 1900s through the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a pivotal design event that rebranded Japan on the world stage. Through richly illustrated case studies, Weisenfeld tells the story of how modern corporations and consumer capitalism transformed Japan’s visual culture and artistic production across the pre- and postwar periods, revealing how com...